Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

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Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby ir » Fri Jan 13, 2006 5:30 pm

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060113/us_nm/iraq_abuse_taskforce_dc">news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060...skforce_dc</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case By Will Dunham <br>Thu Jan 12, 9:36 PM ET<br> <br><br><br>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newly released military documents show U.S. Army investigators closed a probe into allegations an Iraqi detainee had been abused by a shadowy military task force after its members used fake names and asserted that key computer files had been lost. <br><br>ADVERTISEMENT<br> <br>The documents shed light on Task Force 6-26, a special operations unit, and confirmed the existence of a secret military "Special Access Program" associated with it, ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said on Thursday.<br><br>The documents were released by the Army to the American Civil Liberties Union under court order through the Freedom of Information Act. They were the latest files to provide details of the numerous investigations carried out by the Army into allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq.<br><br>A June 2005 document by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq described its investigation into suspected abuse of a detainee captured in January 2004 by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, deposed President Saddam Hussein's hometown. His name was redacted, but he was mentioned as the son of a Saddam bodyguard.<br><br>The man was taken to Baghdad international airport, documents stated. The United States maintains a prison there for "high-value" detainees.<br><br>He told Army investigators that U.S. personnel forced him one night to remove his clothes, walk into walls with a box over his head connected to a rope around his neck, punched him in the spinal area until he fainted, placed him in front of an air conditioner while cold water was poured on him, and kicked him in the stomach until he vomited, the documents stated.<br><br>'FAKE NAMES'<br><br>Investigators could not find the personnel involved or the man's medical files, and the case was closed, the files stated. A memo listed the suspected offenses as "aggravated assault, cruelty and maltreatment."<br><br>"The only names identified by this investigation were determined to be fake names utilized by the capturing soldiers," the memo stated. "6-26 also had a major computer malfunction which resulted in them losing 70 percent of their files; therefore they can't find the cases we need to review."<br><br>The memo said the investigation should not be reopened. "Hell, even if we reopened it we wouldn't get anymore information than we already have," the memo stated.<br><br>Singh said previous documents indicated Task Force 6-26 was linked to other instances of detainee abuse in Iraq.<br><br>"This document suggests that Task Force 6-26 was part of a larger, clandestine program that we think may have links with high-ranking officials, because obviously someone high up had the authority to put this program in place," Singh said in a telephone interview.<br><br>Army spokesman Paul Boyce said the Army had taken allegations of detainee abuse "extremely seriously."<br><br>"The Army has gone to great extent in travel, interviews, documentation and concern to make sure that each and every allegation was thoroughly reviewed, thoroughly examined and, when appropriate, acted upon either through nonjudicial or judicial punishment," Boyce said.<br><br>A document stated Army investigators were not able to fully investigate suspects and witnesses because they were involved in the Special Access Program and due to the classified nature of their work.<br><br>The task force is stationed out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the document said. The base houses the Army Special Operations Command. <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby antiaristo » Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:14 am

Fort Bragg is also the base for Task Force 20.<br>That's the unit that was kidnapping people in Europe and flying them away to be tortured.<br><br>America's servicemen seem to LUUUV torture.<br>"It's manly to torture the defenceless" - GW Bush <p></p><i></i>
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north carolina

Postby ir » Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:48 am

a favorite "sabbatical" location for Israeli spooks... <p></p><i></i>
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That place,

Postby Byrne » Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:05 pm

Fort Bragg, North Carolina -the residents there sure get involved in some <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>interesting</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> missions. <br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1536576" target="top">Sometimes the missions are too interesting to talk about.</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby starroute » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:09 pm

All these task forces are worth looking into. Task Force 20 was active in Iraq from before the invasion (February 2003) until that November, when it was folded into Task Force 121. And Task Force 626 is described as a streamlined version of Task Force 121 in an <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://billroggio.com/archives/2005/04/the_net.php">article</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> from last spring.<br><br>For some moderately scary stuff about the potentials of Task Force 121 as a new Phoenix Program, see <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05082004.html">here</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->.<br><br>But it's not just Iraq -- this is part of Rumsfeld's general plan to phase out the regular military in favor of counter-insurgency type operations. And that, in turn, has serious domestic implications.<br><br>I have a lot of notes on this stuff, but no time to pull them together right now. I'll post more on this when I'm free. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby starroute » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:17 am

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/task-force-121/">www.rotten.com/library/co...force-121/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Are your Special Forces just not special enough? Have your covert ops all gone overt? Is your "black bag" squad recycling last year's leather purse?<br><br>There's nothing to reinvigorate an ailing global conspiracy like a freshly named and numbered task force with virtually unlimited power. (Just ask Majestic-12.)<br><br>Task Force 121 may end up being the Bush Administration's major contribution to posterity. A division of the Army Special Forces, the force is made up of Delta Force commandos, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, a bunch of shady, well-armed guys from the CIA and miscellaneous action heroes from various countries. . . .<br><br>TF121 is the brainchild of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. After September 11, Rumsfeld jumped on the opportunity to elevate the status of the Pentagon by setting up an alternative Justice Department -- one with lots of prisons, but not so many pesky constitutional rights.<br><br>Military-run prisons like Camp X-Ray and Abu Ghraib represent the penal side of Rumsfeld's grand vision. Task Force 121 is the investigative arm, the FBI of the Defense Department. . . .<br><br>The head of Task Force 121 is Rear Admiral Bill McRaven, a former Navy SEAL with a name straight out of an action movie. According to Newsweek, a colleague of McRaven's described him thusly: "He is physically tough, compassionate and can drive a knife through your ribs in a nanosecond."<br><br>Most of the credible reporting on TF121 comes from just a very few sources -- mainly the New York Times, and the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, who also helped break the story of prisoner torture at the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. The latter connection is not coincidental. Part of Task Force 121's mission is to "take the gloves off" in dealing with the Pentagon's enemies.<br><br>Part of Rumsfeld's anti-terrorism policy, which later expanded to an anti-everything policy, was the practice of "snatch and grab" operations. In bureaucratese, a snatch is known as an "extraordinary rendition," which is a nice way to say "illegal kidnapping." . . .<br><br>After the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration quickly dispensed with any pretense of pondering the legality of snatch missions. Instead, it began to codify them as part of the standard response to security threats. . . .<br><br>Although it hasn't been definitely established yet, rumors have been flying thick that Task Force 121 may have been involved in directing interrogations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. TF121 has the particular misfortune to have been sponsored by the Defense Department's top spook, Stephen Cambone.<br><br>An Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Cambone is more or less the top civilian exclusively responsible for military intelligence, including collection and covert operations. Cambone is an obvious choice to "take one for the team," and it looks like the Congressional overseers of the Defense Department are ready to take him as the first in a series of sacrificial lambs.<br><br>According to the New Yorker, Cambone's main qualification to lead a military intelligence service was apparently his ability to covertly infiltrate his nose extravagantly far up Rumsfeld's ass. His top aide was a general named Bill Boykin, who previously distinguished himself with public statements that "Satan wants to destroy (the United States)," that the U.S. was a "Christian army," that President Bush was "appointed by God," and that Boykin's personal message to the Muslim world was: "My god is bigger than your god."<br><br>Unfortunately, Cambone's talent for intelligence was responsible for such important tasks as justifying the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or that it was allied with al Qaeda. There were significant problems with his work in these areas, such as the fact that the information he provided was not true.<br><br>As the parents of Task Force 121, Cambone and Boykin aren't likely to provide the sort of stable home that a paramilitary hit squad needs in order to thrive. . . .<br><br>Meanwhile, the mandate for Task Force 121 just keeps on getting broader and broader. According to the New Yorker, the administration has been looking at expanding operations into Iran. Based on the same flimsy kind of intelligence that got the U.S. into Iraq in the first place, some in the Bush administration have now determined that Iran is the actual cause of all America's problems in Iraq.<br><br>One of the benefits of using a group like Task Force 121 as a secret army, carrying out the country's dirty work all over the world, is that Special Forces mission are not included under the War Powers Act.<br><br>The practical effect of that legal detail is that the president can launch Special Forces missions without having to notify Congress in advance, seek Congressional approval to continue or even disclose any details of the mission after its done, including the number of forces deployed, their appointed tasks, collateral damages along the way (like innocent civilians accidentally killed), any illegal or mistaken detentions... or whether Task Force members are stationed in specific locations, like Abu Ghraib, performing specific jobs, like beating confessions out of naked suspects wearing dog leashes.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby starroute » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:26 am

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/01/rumsfelds_doctr.html">blogs.washingtonpost.com/...doctr.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Rumsfeld's Secret Operations<br><br>Tony Capaccio's Bloomberg story last week that the Pentagon is increasing the size of U.S. special operations forces by almost 25 percent is another sign of the unchecked growth of secret operations in the Bush administration.<br><br>According to a December 20 budget memorandum signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, 12,000 new positions will be added to Special Operations Command in the 2007-2011 five-year defense plan, augmenting an already expanded force of 51,000 Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other commandos.<br><br>England calls for adding $7.4 billion to the five year SOCOM budget, a budget that has almost doubled since 9/11.<br><br>Donald Rumsfeld's "SOCization" of the U.S. military -- as some insiders call it -- is already responsible for short-sighted decisions that have led the current Iraq mess. What is more, the growth of secret and compartmented operations in the Defense Department -- not just special operations but also "information" operations and other intelligence organizations, goes forward without any real appraisal as to success or costs. . . .<br><br>Ever since the war in Afghanistan started in October 2001, Donald Rumsfeld has shown a propensity for special operations. On the surface, this makes sense to fight the war on terror and face the long-term challenges of "asymmetric" warfare of the 21st Century. A combination of special operations and air power toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden on the run. In Iraq two years later, special operations dominated in northern and western Iraq, contributing to the spectacular three-week conventional military defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime. . . .<br><br>Under the Rumsfeld doctrine of immediate victory, there is no question that the vanquishing of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam prevented another 9/11 at that moment. The use of light forces moving quickly scattered the enemy so that it could not organize and plan another spectacular attack on the United States, and so that it also could not breathe long enough to develop weapons of mass destruction.<br><br>That is the theory.<br> <br>We all know what happened next, at least in the mid-term. In Afghanistan and Iraq, more and more conventional military forces have had to be brought in to repair the flaws associated with the doctrine of immediate victory. And though special operations continue to play a central role in those countries, terrorist networks have not only proliferated and grown, but they have also strengthened in parts of the world -- Pakistan, Syria, North Africa, Saudi Arabia -- where U.S. special operations, even clandestine special operations, have minimal effect.<br><br>Donald Rumsfeld's "SOCization" of the U.S. military hasn't necessarily "starved" conventional military forces -- I'm not making that argument. It is more that the singular desire to "take the fight to the enemy'' has slighted "conventional" approaches in a dogma of immediate gratification. This is another ironic and unintended side effect for a Secretary who has articulated that the war on terrorism will be a long war from the very beginning. But it is a clear effect of prizing stopping another 9/11 on our shores today at any cost tomorrow.<br><br>The growth of special operations, like the growth of Pentagon domestic spying and warantless NSA surveillance, is another example of the propensity as well for the Bush administration to fight the war on terrorism through secret government. Whether one is for secrecy to protect American assets or not, without the light of day, we just can't know whether or not the pursuit is really most effective, how successful it has been, or how other alternatives would stack up.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby starroute » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:31 am

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05082004.html">www.counterpunch.org/vale...82004.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>This unstated connection to the Phoenix Program, which was a major factor in the May Lai Massacre, is also significant in understanding what Hersh wants us to infer from his articles on national security issues. Specifically, as Hersh informed us in a December 2003 article in The New Yorker (titled "MOVING TARGETS: Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?" ), the CIA had formed a new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, to neutralize Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination. According to Hersh, many of the anonymous officials he interviewed for his article feared that the new operation, called "preëmptive manhunting" by one of them, had "the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program." . . .<br><br>Two things require our attention here. First, why has no one in the press, or Congress, devoted the same degree of attention to the CIA's death squads roaming around Iraq, as they have to the Abu Ghoryab scandal? We know from CNN's David Ensor that " An Iraqi prisoner who died in November while being interrogated by a CIA officer and contract translator arrived at Abu Ghraib (sic) prison with "broken ribs and breathing difficulties" after being arrested by Navy SEALs, U.S. officials said Thursday. Unnamed Pentagon officials were quoted Wednesday saying the man had been delivered to the prison in "good health."<br><br>We know from Hersh that Phoenix is policy in Iraq, and that it got out of control in Vietnam. We also know that Navy SEALs are one of CIA's primary unilateral facets of its Phoenix-style Program in Iraq ­ but there's no accounting for the number of Iraqis killed, abducted or tortured through the Program. Why not? Why not reporting in it? Must we wait for some Navy SEAL to be brought up on murder charges first?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Postby antiaristo » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:31 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Must we wait for some Navy SEAL to be brought up on murder charges first?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Hah! This is America.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"The only names identified by this investigation were determined to be fake names utilized by the capturing soldiers," the memo stated. "6-26 also had a major computer malfunction which resulted in them losing 70 percent of their files; therefore they can't find the cases we need to review."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>And good ole boy Colin Powell, paraphrasing...<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"You'll see the REAL AMERICA when we investigate these matters..."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>He was right there.<br>Remind me, what happened to those photos the judge ordered released? <p></p><i></i>
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Boys from Bragg

Postby OnoI812 » Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:44 am

wasn't it the boys from Bragg involved as agent provocateur in the Seattle WTO riots. Also were'nt the BFB involved in the assault on Waco...Seems these scum have already been active domesticly for quite some time. <p></p><i></i>
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